"Nearly all.... His father died.... My aunt died. These facts seem unrelated. But they were not.... And then—then—Oswald lost his money.... Everything.... And I—married him.... There was more than I have told you.... I think I may tell this—I had better tell you, perhaps.... Did you ever know that my aunt employed lawyers to investigate the matter concerning the money belonging to Chiltern Grismer’s sister, who was my mother’s mother?" "No." "She did. I have seen Mr. Grismer at the hospital once or twice. He came to see my aunt in regard to the investigation.... The last time he came, my aunt was ill, threatened with pneumonia. I saw him passing through the grounds. He looked frightfully haggard and ill. He came out of the infirmary where my aunt was, in about an hour, and walked slowly down the gravel path as though he were in a daze.... He died shortly afterward.... And then my aunt died.... And Oswald lost his money.... And I—married him." "Is that all you can tell me?" After a silence she looked up, her lip quivering: "All except this." And she put her arms around his neck and dropped her head on his breast. *CHAPTER XXIX* In reply to a letter of hers, Cleland wrote to Stephanie the middle of June from Runner’s Rest in the Berkshires: STEVE, DEAR: The place is charming and everything is ready for you and Helen whenever you care to come. I had the caretaker’s wife and daughters here for several days’ scrubbing and cleaning woodwork, windows and floors. They’ve put a vacuum cleaner on everything else and the house shines! As for the new servants, they seem the usual sort, unappreciative, sure to quarrel among themselves, fairly efficient, incapable of gratitude, and likely to leave you in the lurch if the whim seizes them. They’ve all come to me with complaints of various sorts. The average servant detests clean, fresh quarters in the country and bitterly misses the smelly and oily animation of the metropolitan slums. But this unpretentious old place is very beautiful, Steve. You haven’t been here since you were a girl, and it will be a surprise to you to find how really lovely are this plain old house and simple grounds. Oswald has made several sketches of the grounds, and is making others for the pool and fountain. He is anything but melancholy; he strolls about quite happily with the eternal cigarette in his mouth and an enormous rose-scented white peony in his button-hole; and in the evening he and I light a fire in the library—for the evenings are a trifle chilly still—and we read or chat or discuss men and affairs most companionably. The occult charm in this man, of which you are so conscious, I myself can perceive. There seems to be, deep within him, an inexplicable quality which appeals—something latent, indefinable—something that you suspect to be wistful, yet which is too sensitive, too self-distrustful to respond to the very sympathy it seems to draw.